Don Pendleton - Lethal Vengeance

In short, a homicidal psychopath was useful in Juárez, and by no means the only one at large.

The present sacrifice was not El Psicópata’s normal prey. He favored females younger than himself, although his sacrifices had included men, as well, a few minors, a handful of old indigens. This one was different: a former man of substance by the look of him, though he’d come down to nothing in the end. Captain Prieto, promoted since striking his bargain with El Psicópata, left nothing with this one to identify him, and it mattered not.

His orders were simple: make it seem as usual, disposal offering no pointers to the truth, assuming the remains were found.

Which left him worlds of what gringos described as “wiggle room.”

He could afford to take his time and relish the experience.

Hacienda de las Torres

Bolan scanned his target from a block out, through his Leupold BX-1 binoculars. The neighborhood—at least this part of it—was seedy and presumably a menace after dark. It was an hour off from sunset, too long since Brognola had been lifted from El Paso. Bolan planned on teaching local predators to walk in fear, just like their decent neighbors and the tourists who occasionally strayed into this part of Ciudad Juárez.

Assuming they could walk—or breathe—when he was done.

In any case, he had a message to deliver and he didn’t need a living gofer to carry it back home.

The district took its name from Avenida de las Torres—Avenue of the Towers—running north-south for miles, directly through the dark heart of Juárez. In this section, the towers ran toward blocks of public housing that were barely habitable, high-rise breeding grounds of crime. Life was cheap here, thanks to teenage gangs and cartels fighting over turf, not caring who got caught up in the crossfire.

Bolan wasn’t looking at one of the housing projects now. His target was a warehouse owned and operated by members of the Juárez Cartel, defended—so they thought—by what appeared to be a couple dozen thugs with weapons openly displayed, and probably an equal number on the inside.

He had no good reason to believe that either of the two warring cartels had snatched Brognola from El Paso. Even with persistent leaks and the payola rife in Washington, only a chosen few, all at the highest level, knew about the covert operations he directed. The number who could offer up specifics to the enemy would hardly fill a large booth at a pricey restaurant. More to the point, if someone had been selling Stony Man’s secrets, a blow should’ve been struck against the Farm, not Hal Brognola, when he was at a conference more than halfway across the continent.

There had been attacks on Stony Man, costing the on-site team and Bolan dearly, but he had no fear of that being repeated anytime in the foreseeable future.

No, he was starting with the drug cartels because, between them, they controlled Juárez in every way that counted. Sure, the cartels existed in Chihuahua by the sufferance of federales and the politicians who appointed them, but gangland overlords, by definition, had to know what was occurring in a city they controlled or hoped to claim.

Bolan was certain of one thing: someone in Ciudad Juárez knew why Brognola had been snatched, who had abducted him and where he could be found, either alive or dead. The clock was running and, to get results without undue delay, Bolan was starting at the top.

Not literally at the gated dwellings of Kuno Carillo or Rodolfo Garza yet, but by the time those top-flight narcotrafficantes got his message, he’d be knocking at their door—and maybe blowing down their houses.

First things first.

When every second counted toward survival but you had no leads on the solution to a lethal problem, cool heads normally prevailed. Which didn’t mean that “cool” and “calm” were synonyms.

Juárez was on the verge of an apocalypse. Its self-appointed rulers simply didn’t know it yet.

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